


Auguries of Innocence

by DachOsmin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Character Study, Gen, I'm Sorry, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 23:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DachOsmin/pseuds/DachOsmin
Summary: Death comes like the sun setting over dark hills, like frost creeping up the side of a windowpane, like snow setting gently over a bitter harvest, like the onset of night.





	Auguries of Innocence

**Heimdall**

Heimdall lies in the wreckage of Asgard’s last hopes and waits for death to claim him. His stomach is slick with dark blood; he can feel the slip of his intestines with each haggard breath.

This is not his first battle or his worst defeat. He knows wounds well, and has seen so many of this sort fell warriors in their prime. Neither youthful valor or hoary experience are any match for a well-placed sword stroke to the gut.

He knows death is coming. He can sense it waiting in the wings, hovering just past the edges of his vision. It would be so easy to lay his head back against the body of the soldier to his right and rest until the blood in his hourglass comes to a standstill. It would be a gentle end, a kind end: no abruptness or violence, just a gentle drifting under, like leaves on the surface of a pond.

Heimdall has never been very good at doing things the easy way.

He grits his teeth, forces his fingers to curl around the haft of his sword, and calls on the Bifrost one last time. 

And despite the numbness in his hands and the blood in his mouth, it answers. It answers with light and color and the memory of music and golden days in Asgard long ago. 

It sweeps down through the dead of space and encircles the mortal- Banner, he’s called- before carrying him far away. Perhaps he will be able to bring a warning to others. Or perhaps he’ll fail, but denying Thanos one more victim is gift enough.

The light is gone as fast as it had come, but Heimdall still feels the warmth of the Bifrost in the spaces between his teeth as he lets his head fall back with a grunt.

“You should not have done that,” Thanos murmurs, face carved into a grim scowl.

But in this Heimdall knows Thanos is wrong, for there is nothing so sweet as one last defiance, one last laugh in the face of death.

Even as Thanos stalks closer and hefts his spear, Heimdall is smiling. And even as the spear punctures the leather of his armor and the soft flesh of his abdomen, punches through his liver and snags on the edge of his ribs as it drives into the floor beneath him- Heimdall is laughing.

Death comes like an exultation, like the clarion call of trumpets echoing of the courtyard of the Asgardian palace, like the clasped hands of an old, old friend.  


**Loki**

Loki makes an oath of loyalty and breaks it with his next breath.

The skalds- if any were still alive- would have said that this was appropriate: that the last act of the God of Mischief should be a broken promise.

Except Loki’s betrayal is at its heart not a promise broken but a promise held: not to Thanos, but to Thor. As Thanos reaches for him, Loki hopes that Thor understands this. Loki thinks he will. They know each other so very well by now.

Thanos lifts Loki at the throat, pressing against his windpipe almost gently, as if he were testing the ripeness of a fruit. Loki’s feet kick beneath him; there’s a buzz in his ears and a numbness in his tongue.

Death comes like the sun setting over dark hills, like frost creeping up the side of a windowpane, like snow setting gently over a bitter harvest, like the onset of night.

 

**Gamora**

She’s laughing.

The universe works in strange ways, but even for all that Peter claims she has no sense of humor, she knows a joke when she sees one. He must sacrifice someone he loves. There is no one he loves, except maybe himself.

He’s going to fail in this quest of his, and it’s all because he has no one, because he never gave her or her sister that one thing they had yearned and ached and bled for all these years. In the end, she’s going to be the one that dooms him. How beautiful. How poetic.

He’s crying. Why is he crying?

He’s got her by the wrist and she’s screaming, and she has no idea whether it’s from the rage or the pain or the sudden shock of horror for what this means.

The rush of air swallows her screams as she falls; even as the ground rises up to meet her all she can do is stare at his face, now tiny above her. His cheeks are wet with tears, and each one hurts more than the sudden crack of the ground beneath her.

Death comes like biting down on the pit of a peach by mistake. Death comes like receiving your heart’s desire only to find out you never wanted it, never should have prayed for it every night before you fell asleep. Death comes like disappointment.

 

**T’challa**

The battle is ending around him, and he is putting his mind to task: how best to celebrate their victory, how best to honor the fallen, how soon to engage in a counterattack.

He opens his mouth to ask Okoye something and feels a tingle in his feet-

Death comes like a missing step in the stairs.  


**Peter Parker  
**

Peter’s trying really hard to hold it together. He knows Mr. Stark didn’t want him along; this is probably the only chance he gets to prove himself. He just wants Mr. Stark to be proud of him, to realize he’s not just some stupid kid. He can’t fuck this up. He won’t.

But there’s a strange feeling burning in his fingers and toes. It’s not pain exactly, but an _absence-_ numb and cold and terrible. He grits his teeth because it’s nothing, he’ll push it down. It’s probably just shock anyway, and he’s not burdening Mr. Stark with his stupid trauma when there’s things that are actually important going on.

But the feeling gets worse and worse and there’s a buzzing in his ears and finally he can’t hold it back any longer- “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good,” he mumbles.

Mr. Stark is saying something but he can’t hear him; his own voice is too loud in his ears. He’s babbling: apologies and pleas and everything in between. And then he goes quiet, and then he can’t hear anything at all.

Death comes like an unwelcome houseguest, like an alarm clock set too early, like a mistake.

 

**Bucky Barnes  
**

Death comes, and it is not what he expects.

Death has chased and been chased by him across three quarters of a century and three-fourths of the world. Bucky knows Death as the missed connection: the old acquaintance he sees on the other side of the platform just before the train arrives, the face whose name he can’t recall, the ex-lover that leaves messages at odd hours and sends him gifts he doesn’t want but has no way of returning.

He’s evaded Death for longer than most manage. He expects Death will be vengeful. Painful.

But he is surprised: Death comes and it is quiet, tender. There is no pain.

 

**Wanda and Vision**

Wanda is engaged in the agonizing task of killing the man she loves when Thanos comes.

He’s too late; she can feel it in her bones. She watches him running towards her; she can feel the crystal’s fault lines begin to shiver under the strain. And as the shivering turns to shaking turns to a primal scream and the shatter of stone in the air, she’s smiling through her tears. Because she may have just ripped her own heart out, but that means Thanos can’t have it, either.

“Rot in hell,” she whispers.

He smiles.

And then the air is blurring green and there’s a rip of ozone in the air and suddenly Vision is in one piece in her arms again and Thanos is here and he’s throwing her aside like she’s a doll. She’s screaming and reaching out, but it’s too late, too late, all too late.

Death comes for her like a mercy, like clean water on a burn, like a blanket enfolding her to ward against the cold.

 

**The Guardians**

On a strange planet a million miles away, Death comes for the Guardians one by one: each of them lost and so very far from home. They did not expect it. They had thought that they would have longer. There were things still left to do.

Death comes like a period in the middle of a sentence.  


**Stephen Strange  
**

Since he came into his powers, Stephen has grown accustomed to the feel of the universe at the back of his mind. It bothered him at first; he would worry at the awareness of it ike a loose tooth or a bit of grit under his fingernails.

 He has come to an equilibrium of late, such that the ebb and flow of time and space feels as natural as the beating of his heart. So much so that when he first hears it, that plucked note echoing through the cosmos, he thinks it’s his own heart that’s stopped.

He sits with the sudden emptiness and reflects on it as the others panic and one by one begin to drift into dust. His own limbs take their time to fade, as if loath to give up this shape.

He is sad at the ending, even though he knew it would come. Beneath the robes and the magic and the bending of time, Stephen is still a human man with a human heart, and humans will always mourn their own deaths.

Death comes like the click of a lock unlatching, like the instant you draw a winning card from the deck, like the moment you see the way across the chessboard to the enemy king.

He has foreseen this. And he has foreseen what comes after. And he knows: he has lost the battle, but won the war.

Death comes to Stephen Strange like a quiet snowfall. But even winter has its ending, and as Stephen closes his eyes, he can almost smell the buds of spring.

**Author's Note:**

> On the way home from seeing IW I was reading Alice Oswald's poem Memorial, which is basically the Illiad but edited so it's only the deaths. So I thought I might try it with Marvel! Big thanks to Prinzenhasserin for the super helpful beta work!


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